Electronic Publishers: Blurb
If dealing with layouts, templates and styles is more than you want to handle in your family history project, take a look at Blurb. This publishing platform includes the free BookSmart® software which makes it easy to pull the photos, scanned records and text into a beautifully designed book.
You select from a number of page layouts, then drag and drop your images and text onto each page. Want to kick it up a notch? BookSmart® also includes themes that can be added to your project to add consistent design elements throughout the book.
Once your book is finished, you upload the project to Blurb and add it to your bookstore. Choose your publishing options (hard cover, soft cover, or all), build your preview and set a price. Now, just let the family know where to find it and you’re in business. Like the other publishing platforms discussed here, there are no upfront costs to you and no minimum purchase requirements.
From FAMILY: The Sommer/Cole Family by Laura Leigh Cole-Brooker
Blurb is also a great platform for documenting family events like weddings, anniversaries and reunions – not to mention class reunions and other group events. Here are some examples of what you can do with Blurb:
New to Blurb is the PDF to Book feature. This gives more adventurous publishers all the flexibility they want to create their books. They even provide Adobe InDesign templates to help you get started.
As you can see from the examples, this platform focuses on photos. While text is quite welcome in publications produced using Blurb, most of the functionality supports displaying your images to their best advantage. In many cases, your family history project is primarily graphic – photos, scanned letters and documents, etc. In these situations, Blurb is a good option. Blurb also supports electronic publishers at all experience levels, from the most basic to the most advanced. For those who need someone holding their hand every step of the way, Blurb’s there for you. And, for those adventurous souls who want to do it their way, Blurb’s there for you too.
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